Bitter April
by calledbyname
Summary: After Wilhelmina runs away from home, Philip sets out to track her down and bring her home. Will he finally accept the truth about Briarwood and his halfbrother, or will his ties to Chaillot prove stronger? Oneshot.


**A/N:** I wrote this in June of 2005, then left it in a notebook and forgot about it for ages. Definite tribute has to go to Foxfire1, whose excellent Wilhelmina series, _Dusk Dawning_, inspired this piece a lot.

* * *

Late winter and early spring, to be completely honest, were hell.

The day after Winsol, houses all over Chaillot stood empty, tasks left where they lay, and searchers spiderwebbed the island with booted feet, clutching Craft-warmed cloaks against the winter chill. Philip stood with them. It was his duty, after all. There were nights the blood and anger cut so deep he took out a lantern into the cold and searched alone, calling his daughter's name.

She never came back. They never found a body. By spring, the entire family was battered beyond recognition, and at the same time able to hold on only to its very solid public facade. The Angellines, the island said, were doing well, all things considered.

Philip found the note when she left; Graff no longer dared enter Wilhelmina's room without permission, and the door was locked from the inside. Wilhelmina had been avoiding dinner lately, and he needed to talk to her about it. Too many hurts already; no use her withdrawing from the family completely. That was no way to heal.

He was the only one to actually read the letter. After he set it down, it had to thaw, and then the ink ran.

Spring heralded a search of an entirely different nature.

* * *

She stood as far apart from him as could possibly be considered polite. In the private room of an inn, it was almost enough; he couldn't reach her so quickly that she did not have a warning to run. Philip prayed that her ability to make these calculations was a new thing, but it hurt to already know that it was not.

_Are you safe? Are you well? Do they take care of you?_ These were such a strange people, she was staying with, and he didn't trust them; this far east, you could never trust anybody. The closer to sunset in Terreille, the safer; everyone knew that. She should not be so far away from him.

"I told you why I left," Wilhelmina said again. "I don't want to come back. And you won't make me." On that, she raised her chin defiantly, looked her mother all over again, made him ashamed that he might ever require such a willingness to fight.

"I won't make you," he found himself agreeing. "But I always wanted to protect you, Wilhelmina. Always. I always wanted you to be safe."

"And that worked _very_ well," she said with all the venom a fourteen-year-old witch was capable of. Philip flinched, feeling it burn. He clamped his teeth shut and tried, as always, not to respond. Not to cause conflict. Not to upset anyone.

Then Wilhelmina burst into tears, hands sliding over her face. "Don't you understand?" she cried brokenly. "It was Briarwood that hurt her. It was always them hurting her. And you never listened to us." The sobs were coming so thick and fast, it was hard to understand her. "Nobody believed me."

He couldn't move, couldn't come closer, couldn't bear to see the wild-animal motion she would make to evade him. For a moment, Philip felt completely paralyzed. "I will promise you something," he heard himself say in a voice he didn't recognise. Wilhelmina stopped crying, still choking back sobs, hands pressed over her eyes. "I will believe anything you tell me. I will leave if you want me to. I will not hurt you. And I will listen."

She dropped her hands and looked at him, and her expression cut him to the core. An animal caught in a trap gave such a look to a trapper; he had her snared in the lines of love and obedience of her childhood. The same lines that Robert had tried to play to his own benefit. So, heart bleeding quietly as it always did, he called in his Green Jewel pendant, and then his ring. Wilhelmina went white, especially when he stepped closer to her to put them on the windowsill between them.

Turning away, he strode to the very end of the room. "Vanish those," he said, voice strained.

Her head snapped up, eyes wide with disbelief. She took half a step towards the windowsill. Not even slaves made this kind of surrender. To hand over your Jewels was to give another person power over everything you were. If she chose, she could leave the room now and leave him forever crippled, without the power of his Jewels.

His entire body felt pinched when she vanished the ring and pendant. They sat and had tea in the manner of the aristos they were, despite the fact that neither of them had any appetite at all. It was a calming ritual and an expression of goodwill, although at one point and without prompting Wilhelmina burst into tears. Philip gave her his handkerchief and desperately wished he could comfort her somehow.

She was almost done crying when she asked, "Do you love Bobby and Alexandra?"

"That's-" Philip hedged, "a difficult question. Why do you ask?

Wilhelmina's expression grew stubborn. "Because I want to know." She looked surprisingly- and determinedly- like her mother.

It occurred to Philip that the girls had been told too many soothing truths and given too many evasive answers and now, almost like a punishment, he'd lost both of them within months of each other: one by a malevolent sadist's hand, and one of her own free will. He couldn't tell which was more painful, except maybe now- by some miracle- he might win Wilhelmina back.

"Alexandra is my Queen," he said, his hands curling into fists on the table. "That doesn't mean as much anymore to most people, but it does to me. Without her, I'd be nothing. I give her the best I have. And I... I do still love her. Not... sexually." He stumbled over the world; around the girls, he'd always blunted his language, a deliberate reaction to his brother's crudeness. "But she's still my Queen."

Wilhelmina's eyes were downcast, demurely tracing patterns on the pottery she ate off of. "And Bobby?"

A hard answer; the best he could manage was, "Not anymore."

She looked up at him, startled, and he avoided eye contact.

"I'm a bastard, Wilhelmina. Understand that. I'm not supposed to have any ambitions, except to help him rise in society. Of course I was supposed to love him. He's my brother. No matter the privileges he got that I didn't, or the lovers he stole from me, or the respect he got that I never could, I was always supposed to love him.

"Of course... in some ways, I still love him. He's my brother. He remembers things nobody else does."

"I hate them both," she said, and meant it.

"Wilhelmina," he urged, "Tell me about Briarwood."

So she told him all she knew. Gossip, and what she'd learned from Jaenelle; her own experience, and then about Bobby. Philip thought of Leland, and Jaenelle, and Wilhelmina, and then himself: so many of them hurt, some beyond healing, by a man so much weaker in power than the rest of them. Maimed somehow, with wounds of love and trust refused or twisted, self-worth stolen, and in the end, their own selves ignored.

What was more, Briarwood took away his last defence. Bobby's victims could not do as he had done himself, and walk away, breaking all formal ties of allegiance. They were innocent and powerless. Philip saw with terrible clarity that despite his love for them, he had to go against Alexandra, had to stop keeping Bobby's secrets.

Wilhelmina covered his hand with her own. "Are you safe here?" he asked.

"They take care of me. The Healer is teaching me Craft."

"Be careful, this close to Hayll." He rose, and began to remove money from his wallet: first enough to pay for tea and a private room, and then another stack of marks, which he handed to her. "When Chaillot is safe," he said, "I'll come for you."

After a moment she nodded, and handed him his Jewels.

Solemnly, Philip Alexander kissed her on the cheek. She hugged him once, bright-eyed, and let him go to open the door for him. He wanted to say goodbye, but at the crucial moment his throat constricted, so he could only nod. She raised a hand in farewell. Then he returned home to begin raising Hell, and to give up the brother he'd loved for so long.


End file.
